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A team has shown that artificial photosynthesis is feasible using organic materials. Using the technique, they successfully synthesized useful organic compounds, including pharmaceutical materials, and 'green' hydrogen, which is a next-generation renewable energy source, from waste organic materials using sunlight and water. Their findings are expected to contribute to the production of medicinal and agricultural chemicals as well as sustainable energy initiatives.

Different analytical methods have a significant impact on the results of scientific studies. This is demonstrated by a study conducted by an international research team. In the study, more than 300 scientists compared 174 independent analyses of the same dataset. The findings reveal that different methods can lead to highly variable conclusions.

In the rapidly developing contest between human creativity and artificial intelligence algorithms, professional artists still have an edge in producing more creative AI-assisted artwork than the AI programs themselves or novice artists, according to new research.

A multi-institutional research team has clarified the energy levels of color centers at the SiO2/SiC interface, paving the way toward the development of scalable quantum technologies that use them as single-photon emitters.

A multi-institutional research team has clarified the energy levels of color centers at the SiO2/SiC interface, paving the way toward the development of scalable quantum technologies that use them as single-photon emitters.

Researchers developed a new optimized printing approach that could enable super-resolution 3D direct laser writing (DLW) of microlenses, photonics crystals, micro-optical devices, metamaterials and more.

Researchers developed a new optimized printing approach that could enable super-resolution 3D direct laser writing (DLW) of microlenses, photonics crystals, micro-optical devices, metamaterials and more.

A new AI-based system for analyzing images taken over time can accurately detect changes and predict outcomes, according to a new study. The system's sensitivity and flexibility could make it useful across a wide range of medical and scientific applications.

How do rogue planetary-mass objects -- celestial bodies with masses between stars and planets -- form? An international team of astronomers has used advanced simulations to show that these enigmatic objects are linked to the chaotic dynamics of young star clusters.

Researchers are working to enhance battery safety and efficiency by developing solid-state alternatives to lithium-ion batteries. These batteries offer improved energy efficiency and safety, but a major challenge has been the formation of an interphase layer at the junction of the solid electrolyte and cathode. This ultra-thin layer obstructs lithium ion and electron movement, increasing resistance and degrading battery performance.

Researchers are working to enhance battery safety and efficiency by developing solid-state alternatives to lithium-ion batteries. These batteries offer improved energy efficiency and safety, but a major challenge has been the formation of an interphase layer at the junction of the solid electrolyte and cathode. This ultra-thin layer obstructs lithium ion and electron movement, increasing resistance and degrading battery performance.

Astronauts often experience immune dysfunction, skin rashes, and other inflammatory conditions while traveling in space. A new study suggests that these issues could be due to the excessively sterile nature of spacecraft. The study showed that the International Space Station (ISS) has a much lower diversity of microbes compared to human-built environments on Earth, and the microbes that are present are mostly species carried by humans onto the ISS, suggesting that the presence of more microbes from nature could help improve human health in the space station.

Located 2.5 million light-years away, the majestic Andromeda galaxy appears to the naked eye as a faint, spindle-shaped object roughly the angular size of the full Moon. What backyard observers don't see is a swarm of nearly three dozen small satellite galaxies circling the Andromeda galaxy, like bees around a hive.

I swear, NYT columnist Ross Douthat must have a huge publicity machine, because his latest book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, is appearing everywhere, usually as excerpts.  The point of the book is to assert that religion’s decline in America is slowing, and that readers having a “God-shaped hole,” denoting a lack of religious meaning in their lives, should not just become religious, but become Christian. (Douthat thinks that Catholicism is the “right” religion, and of course he happens to be Catholic).

And by “believe,” Douthat doesn’t just mean adhering to a watered-down form of Christianity that sees the New Testament as a series of metaphors. No, he really believes the tenets of his faith, including the miracles of Jesus, the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and the existence of Satan and the afterlife. (See my posts on this delusional book here.) It is a sign of the times that this book, which calls for people to embrace claims that are palpably ridiculous and totally unevidenced—unless you take the New Testament literally, which you can’t because it’s wrong and self-contradictory—is getting not only wide press, but approbation.  Even the New Yorker summary and review of the book, which you can read by clicking below (the screenshot links to the archived version here) is pretty mild in its criticism. Author Rothman is a nonbeliever, and gives good responses to Douthat’s “evidence” for God, but at the end says the he “respects [Douthat’s effort to persuade.”  What does that mean? He respects Douthat’s efforts to proselytize people with a divisive and harmful faith, and to believe stuff without evidence? Well, the New Yorker has always been a bit soft on faith (despite the fact that most of its writers are atheists), because some of their rich and educated readers have “belief in belief”.

Rothman’s summary of the book (his words are indented):

“Believe” is different: in it, Douthat proselytizes. His intended readers aren’t dyed-in-the-wool skeptics of the Richard Dawkins variety, who find religion intellectually absurd. His main goal is to reach people who are curious about faith, or who are “spiritual” but not religious. (According to some surveys, as many as a third of Americans see themselves this way.) If you’re in this camp, you might have a general sense of the mystical ineffability of existence, or believe that there’s more to it than science can describe. You might be agnostic, or even an atheist, while also feeling that religion’s rituals, rhythms, and attitudes can enrich life and connect you to others; that its practices draw our attention to what really matters. At the same time, you might not be able to accept the idea that Jesus actually rose again on the third day.

But Douthat needs to persuade the audience that yes, Jesus rose like a loaf of bread, and more:

Douthat argues that you should be religious because religion, as traditionally conceived, is true; in fact, it’s not just true but commonsensical, despite the rise of science. His most surprising, and perhaps reckless, assertion is that scientific progress has actually increased the chances that “religious perspectives are closer to the truth than purely secular worldviews.”

From what I’ve read here and elsewhere, Douthat has two main arguments for religion. The Argument from Increasing God of the Gaps, and the Argument from Personal Experience.

In “Believe,” Douthat rebels against these attempts to adjust the scale of God; he resists both the minimizing God-of-the-gaps approach and the maximizing abstraction proposed by thinkers like Armstrong and Tillich. First of all, he maintains that the gaps are actually widening: from a survey of speculative ideas in physics, neuroscience, and biology, he draws the conclusion that a “convergence of different forms of evidence” actively points toward the existence of a traditional God. Second, he argues that, even in our supposedly secular world, it’s still eminently reasonable to believe in a supernatural God who reaches down to Earth and affects our lives. David Hume, the eighteenth-century philosopher known for his pursuit of empiricism, predicted that, as the world grew more rational and scientific, people would stop having supernatural experiences, which he thought more common among “ignorant and barbarous nations.” Douthat points out that this hasn’t happened. [JAC: No data are given, however, about any decrease over time.] About a third of Americans “claim to have experienced or witnessed a miraculous healing,” he notes, and regular people continue to have mystical experiences of various kinds. (A 2023 survey conducted by Pew Research found that nearly four in ten respondents believed that the dead can communicate with the living.) Religious experience is a “brute fact,” Douthat writes, shared among billions of people, and its “mysteries constantly cry out for interpretation” just as they always have.

Miraculous healing? Talk to me when an amputee regrows a leg, or someone without eyes regains the ability to see. Why can’t God cure ailments that medicine is impotent to cure?

I’ve discussed some of the God of the Gaps arguments made by Douthat, the two most prominent being the “fine-tuning” argument (the physical parameters of the universe were cleverly adjusted to allow our existence) and the consciousness of humans, which Douthat says cannot be explained by science.  Rothman is good at refuting both in brief responses, and I’ll let you read what he wrote. Plus remember that animals like dogs, cats, squirrels, and other primates also appear to be conscious (of course we can’t prove that), but are these other creatures made in God’s image, too?  Rothman makes a good point here:

Throughout “Believe,” the implication is that work at the frontiers of science has increased the amount of mystery in the world by uncovering impenetrable unknowns. But this is misleading. Science has vastly expanded our understanding of how things work, reducing mystery; along the way, it has inevitably shifted the landscape of our ignorance, sometimes drastically. This new landscape can feel unfamiliar; strangeness comes with the territory. But just because we don’t understand something, it doesn’t mean that we face the ultimately mysterious; we’re probably still dealing with the ordinary, earthly unknown. And if science really does hit a hard limit in certain areas, or if it discovers questions that our minds are simply unequipped to answer—what would that show? Only that we don’t know everything. The likely possibility that omnipotence is beyond us in no way suggests that our intuitive religious revelations are correct. If anything, it suggests the opposite.

That of course is the usual argument against “The Argument for God from Ignorance”: throughout history, one baffling phenomenon after another imputed to God has later been found out to be purely naturalistic (lightning, disease, epilepsy, eclipses, and so on).

The single argument by Douthat that Rothman finds somewhat persuasive is that lots of people have had religious or spiritual experiences. Why are they so common unless they’re showing us the presence of a supernatural being?

At any rate, the version of me that exists today found Douthat’s case for faith unpersuasive. But I still enjoyed “Believe,” and found myself challenged by it. Douthat is right to call attention to the “brute fact” of religious experience, which apparently remains pervasive in a supposedly secular age. In 2006, an editorial in Slate argued that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism indicated a kind of mental weakness on his part—his apparent belief in its more outlandish tenets, Jacob Weisberg wrote, revealed in Romney “a basic failure to think for himself or see the world as it is.” But if lots of people have experiences of the supernatural, then can belief in it really be understood, tout court, as proof of their fundamental irrationality? What about the award-winning journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, who, in her book “Living with a Wild God,” described a “furious encounter with a living substance that was coming at me through all things at once”? In her classic “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” she certainly saw the world as it was.

Well, many of us atheists, including me, have had spiritual experiences, though not religious ones.  I remember sleeping out in Death Valley, looking up at the fantastic display of stars unsullied by nearby human lights, and feeling drawn out of myself, a tiny speck in a huge universe. (But of course that raises the question about why there are so many celestial bodies without humans?) And I won’t get into the visions I had when I was on psychedelic drugs in college.

We are emotional beings, with emotions surely partly a result of evolution, and once the meme of religion has spread, it’s easy to ascribe intense emotions to religious experience. We are also ridden with delusions: after my cat died, I used to see it out of the corner of my eye.  I’m sorry, but if Jesus/God is so anxious for us to believe in Him/Them (he surely doesn’t want all those nonbelievers to fry forever, as Douthat thinks), why doesn’t he simply appear in a way that cannot be written off as a delusion? (We do have cameras and videotape now.) Carl Sagan himself asked this question years ago.

Further, the religious experiences had by members of different faiths correspond to the different tenets of those faiths. Muslims have dreams and visions of Muhammad, and of course Muhammad himself produced the Qur’an after having a vision of the angel Gabriel, who dictated the book to the illiterate merchant.  So if visions of God tell us that God is real, which God who is envisioned is the real one?  I’m sorry, but I don’t find experiences or visions of God/Jesus convincing given that, if he wished, Jesus could make himself available in an irrefutable way to all of humanity, and presto!, we’d all be Catholics! (He also said that he’d return within the lifetime of those who witnessed his Crucifixion. Did he come back? No dice.)

No, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any respect for the deluded, especially when they insist, as does Douthat, they they have hit on the “true” religion. (Muslims, of course, believe that Islam is the final and true religion.)  Where is Mencken when we need him? The best way to go after someone like Douthat is not with intellectual analysis and respect, as does Rothman, but with all-out satire and mockery.

Still, given the constraints of the New Yorker, Rothman’s review is about as good as it can be.

h/t: Barry

There may be logic in keeping spacecraft as sterile as possible, but this could inadvertently be affecting astronauts' health

A cloud of super-heated volcanic ash and gas exploded the brain of one Herculaneum resident and the fragments inside his skull became an extremely rare organic glass

I have two announcements this morning:

a.) First, next Monday, Mar 3 at 12:30 Chicago time (1:30 Eastern time), I am having a 1-1½-hour discussion with DIAGdemocrats  (“DIAG” stands for Democrats with an Informed Approach to Gender. And their slogan is “Liberals guiding our party back to reason and reality.” It’s tailor made for me!) Their “who we are” description is here, and the mission statement here. But there’s a lot of other stuff, including critiques of existing claims and studies involving gender. You can even send emails to your representatives in Congress from the site.

DIAGdemocrats also has a YouTube channel of previous discussions here, an Instagram page here,. and a Facebook page here.

The topic of our discussion is in the headline below, which I believe will link to the discussion on Twitter when you click on it (it will also be archived). We’ll be talking about various things, including the KerFFRFle with the Freedom From Religion Foundation that led to the resignation of Richard Dawkins, Steve Pinker, and I.  But the discussion is likely to be wide-ranging and there will be a Q&A at the end.

As you can tell from the group’s name and the website linked above, it is is dedicated to a rational, science-informed approach to gender issues.

b.) And I want to call attention to this upcoming book edited by Lawrence Krauss; it’ll be available starting July 29 (I believe there will be an audiobook later). Click on the screenshot to go to the Amazon site:

Here’s the Amazon blurb:

An unparalleled group of prominent scholars from wide-ranging disciplines detail ongoing efforts to impose ideological restrictions on science and scholarship throughout western society.

From assaults on merit-based hiring to the policing of language and replacing well-established, disciplinary scholarship by ideological mantras, current science and scholarship is under threat throughout western institutions. As this group of prominent scholars ranging across many different disciplines and political leanings detail, the very future of free inquiry and scientific progress is at risk. Many who have spoken up against this threat have lost their positions, and a climate of fear has arisen that strikes at the heart of modern education and research. Banding together to finally speak out, this brave and unprecedented group of scholars issues a clarion call for change.

I’ve put a list of the authors below. The contents include the second and unpublished part of Richard Dawkins’s essay on sex, a slightly revised version of my essay with Luana Maroja, “The Ideological Subversion of Biology,” plus a bunch of pieces appearing for the first time.  There are six sections as well as an introduction and afterword by Krauss. Keep your eye open for further announcements here or a view of the contents that will likely appear on the Amazon site.

Dorian Abbot

John Armstrong

Peter Boghossian

Maarten Boudry

Alex Byrne

Nicholas A. Christakis

Roger Cohen

Jerry Coyne

Richard Dawkins

Niall Ferguson

Janice Fiamengo

Solveig Lucia Gold

Moti Gorin

Karleen Gribble

Carole Hooven

Geoff Horsman

Joshua T. Katz

Sergiu Klainerman

Lawrence M. Krauss

Anna Krylov Luana Maroja

Christian Ott

Bruce Pardy

Jordan Peterson

Steven Pinker

Richard Redding

Arthur Rousseau Gad Saad

Sally Satel

Lauren Schwartz

Alan Sokal

Alessandro Strumia

Judith Suissa

Alice Sullivan

Jay Tanzman

Abigail Thompson

Amy Wax

Elizabeth Weiss

Frances Widdowson

Today we have backyard botanical photos from Rik Gern of Austin, Texas. Rik’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

The first is a repeat species, adding to pictures I sent you a few years ago.

Here are some scenes from a blossoming Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) that I planted as part of a hedge when I bought my house about sixteen years ago. At the time I didn’t know that it wasn’t native to the region; I just liked the way it looked. Had I known, I probably would have planted something else, but I can’t deny that I’m happy to have it in the back yard.

The next plant is a gangly-looking weed called Henbit Deadnettle (Lamium amplexicaule). It is another non-native plant, but I take no responsibility for this one; it came to my yard uninvited, but not unwelcome. Henbit Deadnettle grows to a few inches in height and is easy to mow no matter how tall it gets. (first two photos below) Here at the tip of the plant (third photo) you can see a few buds getting ready to flower. The flowers aren’t your typical pretty flowers with a symmetrical ring of petals, but they give the plant a splashy, fountain-like look (fourth photo). When I look at the last picture, I like to imagine that it’s an exotic plant about four or five feet tall, and think how thrilled I would be to see such a thing. Then I can look at the original small plant that grows plentifully in the area and still be thrilled to be able to see this example of nature’s variety without even leaving home!

I’m taking a few weeks away from the blog. So today, an open thread with a request for suggestions on topics that you feel have been unexplored by the blog. Let me (and the other contributors) know the questions you have and what subjects you want to see addressed. Or use this to comment on anything else, SBM-related. The floor is yours. […]

The post Open Thread: The Floor is Yours first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Late is better than never for the ‘Blaze Star’ T Coronae Borealis.

It was on track to be the top astronomical event for 2024… and here we are in 2025, still waiting. You might remember around this time last year, when a notice went out that T Coronae Borealis (‘T CrB’) might brighten into naked eye visibility. Well, the bad news is, the ‘Flare Star’ is officially late to the celestial sky show… but the good news is, recent research definitely shows us that something is definitely afoot.

The outburst occurs once every 80 years. First noticed by astronomer John Birmingham in 1866, T Coronae Borealis last brightened in February 1946. That’s 80 years ago, this month. Located about 2,000 light-years distant on the Hercules/Corona Borealis/Serpens Caput constellation junction border, the star spends most of its time below +10th magnitude. Typically during outburst, the star flares and tops out at +2nd magnitude, rivaling the lucida of its host constellation, Alpha Coronae Borealis (Alphecca).

Finding T Corona Borealis in the Sky

We’re fortunate that T CrB currently rises in the east around local midnight. T CrB then rides high in the pre-dawn sky. Late November would be the worst time for the nova to pop, when the Sun lies between us and the star. The situation only improves as early 2025 goes on, and the region moves into the evening sky.

The constellation Corona Borealis and the location of the ‘Blaze Star.’ Credit: Stellarium

The coordinates for T CrB are:

Declination: +25 degrees, 54’ 58”

Right Ascension: 15 Hours 59’ 30”

Looking eastward in early March, two hours after local midnight. Credit: Stellarium Rare Recurrent Novae

T CrB and other recurrent novae are typically part of a two-star system, with a cool red giant star dumping material on a hot white dwarf companion. This accretion builds up to a runaway flash point, and a nova occurs.

A chart of known recurrent novae. Adapted from The Backyard Astronomer’s Deep-Sky Field Guide by David Dickinson.

Two recent notices caught our eye concerning T Coronae Borealis: one titled T CrB on the Verge of an Outburst: H-Alpha Profile Evolution and Accretion Activity and A Sudden Increase of the Accretion Rate of T Coronae Borealis. Both hint that we may soon see some action from the latent flare star.

“My spectral analysis showed a considerable change in the strength of the H-alpha line profile, which could be considered an indicator of the possible eruption of T CrB in the near future. This change posibly resulted from a significant increase in the temperature and accretion rate,” Gesesew Reta (S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences) told Universe Today. “However, this cannot serve as definitive confirmation of the expected eruption. Novae are inherently unpredictable, and a more detailed analysis, considering broader parameters, is needed for a more accurate prediction.”

An artist’s conception of T Corona Borealis in outburst. Credit: NASA’s Visualization Studio/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez/Scott Wiessinger What to expect in 2025

First, I would manage expectations somewhat; while +2nd magnitude is bright enough to see with the naked eye, it’s not set to be the “Brightest Star…. Ever!” as touted around the web. We get naked eye galactic novae every decade or so, though recurrent novae are a rarity, with only about half a dozen known examples.

Certainly, the familiar ring-shaped northern crown asterism of Corona Borealis will look different for a few weeks, with a new rival star. Certainly, modern astrophysicists and astronomers won’t pass up the chance to study the phenomenon… I would fully expect assets including JWST and Hubble to study the star.

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Variable Star Resources

The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) also posted a recent article on current prospects for T CrB… another good quick look for the brightness of flare star is Space Weather, which posts a daily tracker for its magnitude.

Or you could simply step outside every clear March morning, and look up at Corona Borealis with your ‘Mark-1 eyeballs’ and see if anything is amiss. Hey, you might be the very first one to catch the ‘new star’ adorning the Northern Crown, during its current once-in-a-lifetime apparition.

The post Is T Coronae Borealis About to Light Up? appeared first on Universe Today.